[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Wizard said:
>
> > A modet proposal: Beginning with first grade, kids go to
> > school year round, nine to five with a 2-week break at
> > Christmas, one at Easter, and two in the summer. At the end
> > of 10th grade, high school is over. All kids are then sent
> > to "boot camp" where their job is to become independent
> > adults. They learn to wash their clothes, keep their
> > rooms--barracks--tidy and clean, cook their food, and they
> > learn a trade. Maybe they experience some rites of passage
> > that have disappeared since we went to the all volunteer
> > army. Hell, we could go so far as to teach some
> > manners--what a concept.
>
> Why don't we just get rid of the parents altogether? I mean really,
> according to the above attitude, a parent's only role is birthing.
> Daycare, schools and assorted "agencies" do the rest.
I'm seeing a lot of single parent families totally stressed out trying to
find affordable, quality day care after school and during the summer. I
also hear teachers saying that over the summer kids lose so much of what
they learned the year before that the first two months of the school year
are used to review the previous year. I'm also seeing kids who turn
downright evil by August cause they're so bored. Some families have the
luxury of one job among two parents and enough resources to manage. It
appears to me that that is hardly the norm.
>
>
> If a child is so burdensome that we feel compelled to keep it out of the
> house and in others' hands all the time, then maybe we shouldn't be
> having children!
Parents have to work till 5 pm. Mom parents and Dad parents. Do they leave
the kids home alone or with a sibling only a year older? What if they're
six and seven? Only economic improvements have been proven to bring about a
lessening in the number of children a family produces. The economic
circumstances of parents don't necessarily improve all that mch over the
childhood years of their children. Are you saying that child rearing is
only an undertaking for the middle or wealthy classes?
>
>
> In actuality, I suspect that folks don't feel this way about their OWN
> parenting (that it requires such supplementation) rather everyone ELSE'S
> parenting. I must say that if my child doesn't know how to cook food,
> wash clothes, treat others with respect, and much more by the time they
> are in High School, then I AS THEIR PARENT have truly failed. Please
> though, don't assume that we all are such failures.
As far as I know, I have no parenting skills whatsoever, or, if I have them,
they are largely untested. I think I'm too absent-minded to rear children
well. I do pretty well with cats--or cat, at the moment. I have excellent
aunting skills and am moving into great aunting even as we speak. But I do
see a lot of families whose kids do not have any of those skills. I would
assume that their parents are not all that good at those skills either. Are
they failures? Or are they badly educated? Or what?
>
>
> Wizard again:
>
> >Plus, parents work and all the pain and agony of finding day care, etc.
> could be avoided. Too, it's
> > during those teen years when kids and parents are most
> > likely to tear each other apart emotionally if not
> > physically. A drill sergent type is unlikely to put up with
> > that stuff.
>
> Will the drill seargent be trained with text from the works of George
> Orwell?
I doubt it, that's too hard a line to maintain over a long haul. You're
assuming that a drill sergent is just like the army. Probably not.
Probably more like VISTA Volunteers, just out of college, sweet tempered,
but goal oriented; it could happen.
> I find this attitude completely OUTRAGEOUS!
>
>
> Connie Sheppard
> Ward 6 - Ventura Village
>
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